There is a wide variety of forms I use for my paintings and drawings: orbs, tubes, eyes, antennae, triangles and any combination of organic and inorganic shape. One motif that arises often is the hole. These holes can be either clustered or singular. They are neither a perfectly designed orifice nor a diseased crater but somewhere in between. I like to think of these apertures as being like when an artist makes a collage and carefully carves away at a shape in the center of a picture. There is an elegance about such holes but also a disruption.

The three images I am presenting here represent studies from my sketchbook where I am focused on the motif of the hole. My relationship to the absence in these drawings is not like the absence of longing for someone or being deprived but more like a shocking, uncanny absence that one experiences when they see a faceless person in a dream. These drawings are wordless ways of expressing the unsettling sense of something missing.

All three works are: “Untitled,” black pencil on paper, approx. 3″x5″ 2016.

‘It’s a daily struggle, synchronizing the elements of our environment with those within our personalities. This gets only harder when we realize that some parts are always absent, de facto and/or due to misconception. So we simply stroll, looking up and down, trying to rationalize the situation; or simply trying to make excuses for ourselves.’

‘Machine Made God’ explores the dot and the line, the blank and void, the noise and silence of creation.

Taped at CLARA, Clara is a recording facility for electro-acoustic and experimental music. The studio is situated in an old nuclear shelter in the city of Arnhem, east Holland, near the German border. There is a soundproof space, plus a large hall. In combination, the two provide a unique sound.

‘Archive of the void (in Dutch: ‘Archief van de leegte’) is an ongoing stereo-photo project started in the early 90s. In these stereo-negatives of landscapes Martin van den Oever studies the differences of perception between space, depth and void.’